Enormous Tasks Await Superintendent In '97

BOOK BAG

Jerry Smith, superintendent of Lake County schools, closes out 1996 without a lot of accomplishments to look back upon in the schools.

But, hey, give the guy a break. He has been superintendent for only about six weeks.

No one expects Smith, who was elected in November, to have made significant changes in less than two months. Smith, however, was elected on a platform of making ''sweeping changes'' in the schools, and the voters a year or two or three from now may assess what he has done.

Time will tell whether Smith's sweeping changes are made with a Hoover upright vacuum or a whisk broom.

But several clear issues face the superintendent and School Board as they head into 1997 and a new four-year superintendency.

Smith's first task has been to present a unified, positive image for the school system. For the past several years, the system has been plagued with infighting between former Superintendent Tom Sanders and conservative Christian School Board members who, for a time, were a majority on the board.

Now Sanders and those board members are gone, and it is time to move on, Smith said.

School Board Chairman Tom Chapman and other board members concur. Board members have agreed to present a solid front toward improving the schools.

The task is a large one, officials agree.

Topping the list is violence in the schools. The previous administration said the issue had been overplayed, despite the murder of a Tavares Middle School student on campus last year and a state Department of Education report that indicated Lake County schools have the highest incidence of violence per 1,000 students of any of the state's 67 school districts.

Smith says it is clear that the schools are too violent, and he has encouraged school officials to face the issue head on.

''All of us realize we have a problem, and we're trying to solve it,'' Smith said recently.

The occasion for his comments was the arrest of a Eustis High School student who was hanging around outside Eustis Middle School with a gun. It was the third gun incident on a Lake County school campus during December.

Further proof of violence, say officials who acknowledge it, is the high expulsion rate. The School Board has been kicking kids out a half dozen or more at a time this fall for a variety of infractions that go far beyond the ''gum chewing'' that one top-ranked official, who wants to downplay violence in the schools, has characterized as the system's most serious discipline problem.

Weapons possession, intimidation and attacks on teachers and students, marijuana use and other offenses brought students before the board.

In November, an Oak Park Middle School student was up for expulsion for threatening to kill two teachers as an initiation rite to become a member of a gang, according to school district records. At the same meeting, the School Board considered the case of three students at Umatilla High who arrived on campus in full Ku Klux Klan regalia.

Altogether, 10 students were up for expulsion at that single meeting. Ten or 15 years ago, that many students might not have been expelled in a year.

Although the violence is real, officials fret that dealing with it is overshadowing other needs of the school system.

Many of Lake's school buildings have become rundown and crowded, with a student population that is hovering around 26,000 this year and is expected to continue climbing.

The school system lacks a vocational curriculum to meet the needs of many students who cannot go to college because they lack ability or means, many educators say.

The dropout rate is soaring, with more than 30 percent of students not even completing high school, let alone going on to college or specialized training.

There are other problems, too.

They are more than enough to keep the superintendent, the School Board - and the community that Smith hopes to enlist for assistance - busy for 1997 and the next four years, Smith said.